


Three Thousand

by WhoStarLocked



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, Clint Barton Is a Good Bro, Family Feels, Family Fluff, Morgan Stark is adorable, Parent Tony Stark, Tony Stark Has A Heart, Tony Stark Needs a Hug, Tony Stark is Good With Kids
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-13
Updated: 2019-06-13
Packaged: 2020-05-07 08:18:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,218
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19205491
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WhoStarLocked/pseuds/WhoStarLocked
Summary: “It’s the little moments, Tony.” Clint says.Tony has had a yearning for a family, for people to love him, for him to love, for years. He talks about it with Clint, sometimes. Clint gets it. After Thanos, Tony finally gets it, and gets a little moment of his own.(this summary is kind of bad)





	Three Thousand

**Author's Note:**

> I don't own marvel or its characters. 
> 
> This fic is set at some time after the snap.

There are three things that Tony Stark knows to be certain:

  1. He doesn’t want anything to do with the avengers anymore
  2. He loves Pepper
  3. He loves Morgan



They’re not in order. That’s not the point. The point is, he is so fucking glad he took a page out of Barton’s book and settled down away from it all. He knows he and Pepper would never have gotten this far with all the distractions in a city. For the first time, he finds himself truly thankful for what he has.

 ***

“It’s the little moments, Tony.” Clint says, accepting a beer from Steve. Tony does the same. Steve smiles, but heads over to Natasha rather than joining them.

“What, like, her smile while you watch the sunset kind o’ bullshit?” Tony grins, but in his chest, he kind of knows what Clint means. Because where that warmth and love should be, he just feels hollow. He wants to change that.

“Well, I mean,” Clint makes a face. “That’s a generic example.” He’s quiet for a moment, and his gaze is far-away.

“The kids wanted to make a cake for my birthday a couple years back.”

 Tony looks away from the beer label that’s slowly peeling off the bottle, and sees his friend smiling softly. His chest burns. He’s _jealous_. He doesn’t say anything, just raises an eyebrow.

“They damn near burnt the whole house down.” Clint continues with a chuckle. “All the smoke alarms blaring, and the kids were screaming, and Laura, bless her, she was nearly in tears, an’ I just hugged her, made sure she didn’t catch me laughing.”

Tony can’t help but smile. _That’s exactly what I want_ he thinks with a pang of jealousy. He jokes about being the guy who has everything, but really, he’s empty. He hasn’t got that simple happiness, that warmth, that _love_.

 ***

Tony spends half an hour looking at secluded cabins before reaching the conclusion he has no fucking idea what he’ll want to be looking for in this kind of house. 

“Hey Jarv, is our resident archer around?” He asks, frowning at the screen in front of him.

“Agent Barton is currently on the shooting range, sir. Shall I ask him to come down?”

“Yeah, I think you’d better.” Tony sighs. He leans back, scratching his hair, chuckling. What the hell is he doing? Looking at houses out in the middle of bumfuck, nowhere, when he hasn’t even plucked up the courage to ask Pepper to marry him yet?

“You finally lost it?” Clint asks, watching Tony from the doorway with a curious smile.

“Probably.” Tony grins, gesturing to the computer screen.

Clint makes his way over, looks at the screen over Tony’s shoulder.

“Looking to find some little moments?” He asks softly.

Tony swallows. “Yeah, well. If Pepper would have me.” He replies, dropping his gaze to the floor.

He’s kind of surprised when a warm hand squeezes his shoulder.

“She’ll say yes.”

He nods awkwardly, not really believing.

Clint must somehow know that he doesn’t want to talk about that.

He points at one of the houses listed on the screen in front of them.

“You don’t want that one.” He says, and Tony happily takes the change in subject.

“Oh?”

“Mmm. It’s not that far off my place.” He huffs a laugh. “I let Lila be navigator once on a walk, she misread the directions, we were out for hours, an’ I had no clue where we were.”  

Tony laughs. It’s kind of hard to imagine Clint ever getting lost. He’s the guy that has back-ups for the back-up plans and has contingencies in place for when they go tits up.

“So, then you found this place?” He asks, turning in his seat to look at Clint.

“Yeah. It’s in a terrible state inside.” Clint answers, tone thoughtful.

They spend three hours discussing what things Tony should and shouldn’t be looking for, the danger signs, how to figure out if it’s a good price, only stopping when Bruce walks in to drag them both to dinner.

 ***

Shit happens. Shit goes down. Thanos happens.

 ***

“Morgan! Tony!” Pepper calls. “Dinner!”

Tony smiles as he watches his daughter (holy shit, his three year old daughter) scamper ahead of him towards their home.  His heart stops in his chest as she stumbles over a tree root and hits the ground, and he jogs forward to swoop her up into his arms just as she cries out.

“Morgan, honey, are you hurt?” He asks. His daughter looks up at him with a ridiculously adorable pout. “Scale of one to ten?”

There are tears building up in her eyes, but Morgan doesn’t start crying, instead frowning at Tony.

“What’s a scale, daddy?” She asks, rubbing dirt from the heels of her hands on Tony’s shirt.

“Well, it’s, uh, it’s a way to measure things that we can’t actually measure.” Tony explains, hitching her up in his arms. “Like, pain, or happiness, or how much we love someone.”  He plants a kiss on the tip of her nose, and she giggles.  

“Why does it end at ten? Ten is small.” Morgan says as they reach the porch, and Tony sets her down and kneels down so he can take off her shoes.

Tony grins at her Velcro trainers as he answers. She is so much like him.

“Well, ten is bigger than one.”

“But it’s not big, though.” Morgan repeats, picking up her shoes and heading to the door. “I think it should end at two thousand.”  Tony chuckles as they make their way to the kitchen.

Pepper sets Morgan in her seat and hands over plates of grilled meat with salad. Tony pulls a face when he notices the raw pepper in amongst the greens. Without a second thought, he grabs his plate and picks out the pepper pieces and dumps them all on Morgan’s plate.

She looks up at him with a quizzical expression.

“I hate pepper.” He stage whispers to her. Across the table, Pepper snorts, but when he looks over, she’s smiling gently watching them both.

Morgan hums as she spears a bit of pepper on her fork and pops it in her mouth. She takes her time chewing it, then turns to face Tony with a serious expression.

“Daddy, I love pepper two thousand.”

Tony can’t help but smile at her. He leans forwards, ruffles her hair as he tells her,

“I love Pepper two thousand, too.” He smiles, glancing at his wife. She grins back, and stretches her hand across the tabletop to take his.

“But you just said you hate pepper!” Morgan screeches, looking far more put out than a three year old should be able to manage. She watches with indignation as both her parents dissolve into laughter. 

“Daddy, you’re confusing.” She huffs, turning back to her food.

“I love you so much, Morgan.” He says, before digging in to his own dinner.

“Do you love me two thousand?”  She asks around a mouthful of spinach.

Tony looks at her, feeling completely overwhelmed by how much he loves his family.

“I love you three thousand.”

 

Tony understands now, why Clint had struggled so much to explain to him what it meant to have a family. He’s so grateful to finally have little moments of his own.


End file.
